Info about Graveyard Keeper:

Official game description:
Buy Punch Club 2 Now!
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Introducing Game of Crone
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About the Game
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Graveyard Keeper is the most inaccurate medieval cemetery management sim of all time. Build and manage your own graveyard, and expand into other ventures, while finding shortcuts to cut costs. Use all the resources you can find. After all, this is a game about the spirit of capitalism, and doing whatever it takes to build a thriving business. And it’s also a love story.  
*   Face ethical dilemmas. Do you _really_ want to spend money on that proper burger meat for the witch-burning festival, when you have so many resources lying around?  
*   Gather valuable materials and craft new items. Expand your Graveyard into a thriving business. Help yourself -- gather the valuable resources scattered across the surrounding areas, and explore what this land has to offer.  
*   Quests and corpses. These dead bodies don't need all those organs, do they? Why not grind them up and sell them to the local butcher? Or you can go on proper quests, you roleplayer.  
*   Explore mysterious dungeons. No medieval game would be complete without those! Take a trip into the unknown, and find discover new alchemy ingredients -- which may or may not poison a whole bunch of nearby villagers.

Release date: 15 Aug, 2018

Categories: Management Simulation, Resource Management, Crafting, Single-player Story, Character Progression, Automation Game, Dungeon Crawler, Moral Decision-Making


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Relaxing, engaging, and freedom of choice (weight 0.74): The game offers a relaxing and engaging gameplay loop with freedom to progress at your own pace. Players appreciate the lack of strict time limits and the ability to explore various activities without pressure. The game is easy to pick up and play, offering a wealth of content that keeps players engaged for hours.
- Charming aesthetics and immersive atmosphere (weight 0.72): The game features excellent pixel art, immersive music, and a charming presentation. Reviewers consistently praise the detailed graphics, atmospheric sound design, and engaging story, making it a visually and aurally appealing experience. The game world is immersive and enjoyable.
- DLCs enhance and expand experience (weight 0.22): The DLCs significantly enhance the game by adding substantial content, expanding the story and lore, and introducing new mechanics. Reviewers highly recommend purchasing the DLCs to improve the overall experience and alleviate some of the base game's grind. The DLCs feel like a natural extension of the base game.
- Unique take on Stardew Valley (weight 0.21): The game is often compared to Stardew Valley, but with its own unique twists. Reviewers appreciate the engaging NPC interactions, intricate story, and the absence of strict time constraints found in similar games. The game offers a fresh take on the farming sim genre with a darker and more mature theme.
- Enjoyable dark humor and story (weight 0.2): The game features dark humor, witty dialogue, and a satirical tone that appeals to players who enjoy morbid and unconventional themes. The story is engaging and full of unexpected twists, with characters that are both funny and memorable. The game's humor is a strong positive.
- Complex and rewarding progression system (weight 0.17): The game features a complex tech tree and interconnected systems that require strategic thinking and problem-solving. Players appreciate the depth and customization options, as well as the sense of progression and achievement. The game rewards experimentation and independent discovery.
- Unique and macabre gameplay concept (weight 0.17): The game has a unique and macabre concept, such as managing a graveyard and using corpses for various purposes. Reviewers find the dark humor and unconventional mechanics to be both bizarre and strangely appealing. The game offers a fresh and interesting take on the farming genre with its morbid themes.
- Diverse activities and deep systems (weight 0.16): The game offers a wide variety of activities and systems, including farming, crafting, resource management, and dungeon exploration. Reviewers appreciate the depth and scope of the game, as well as the constant stream of tasks and goals to pursue. The game combines elements of multiple genres for a rich and varied experience.
- Deep graveyard management mechanics (weight 0.12): The game offers deep management mechanics, allowing players to optimize resources and transform a cemetery into a thriving business. Reviewers appreciate the unique twist on the farming game genre and the satisfaction of building and managing their own graveyard. The game combines resource management with dark humor and mystery.
- Engaging story and interesting characters (weight 0.1): The game features a well-written and engaging story with interesting characters and unexpected plot twists. Reviewers appreciate the world-building and the way the story unfolds through quests and interactions with NPCs. The game has high replayability due to multiple paths and secrets to discover.
- Zombies automate tasks effectively (weight 0.05): Zombies are helpful for automating tasks, as they don't need food or sleep and automatically deposit items into storage. Automation can be unlocked to alleviate repetitive gameplay while still allowing for graveyard creation and improvement. The Breaking Dead DLC adds zombies that can be used to automate tasks, saving time.
- Addictive and immersive experience (weight 0.04): The game simulates the experience of adapting to a new and unfamiliar situation, making it feel realistic and addictive. The developer intentionally created the game to make the player feel like they don't know what to do, mirroring the isekai premise. The game is highly addictive.
- Morbid and unconventional activities (weight 0.04): The game allows for activities such as digging up bodies, performing unlicensed surgery, extracting organs, and using skin for leather armor. Enjoyable dark humor aspects such as yanking skulls out of corpses and slicing their flesh up to trade before heaving the body in the river. The game includes embalming bodies, cooking up questionable potions, and holding sermons.
- Stranger Sins DLC enhances gameplay (weight 0.04): The Stranger Sins DLC deepens the story of the world and its characters. The Stranger Sins DLC allows the player to run a tavern and earn money. The tavern in the 'Stranger Sins' DLC greatly contributes to wealth accumulation.
- Enjoyable exploration and progression (weight 0.03): The reviewer accumulated almost 100 gold coins and bought everything from the NPCs. The reviewer found a teleport stone in the tavern, which is an essential item. The reviewer is enjoying exploring the game world and meeting strange characters.

Common complaints:
- Tedious grind, unclear guidance (weight 0.96): The game suffers from a tedious grind due to excessive resource requirements, time-gated mechanics, and constant backtracking.  Players are forced to rely on external resources like wikis due to a lack of clear in-game guidance and confusing mechanics.  This makes progression feel slow, repetitive, and frustrating, overshadowing the interesting aspects of the game.
- Inadequate tutorials, poor explanations (weight 0.16): The game lacks adequate tutorials and in-game explanations, making it difficult for new players to understand core mechanics and progress effectively.  This forces players to rely on external resources and trial-and-error, leading to frustration and a steep learning curve.  The game is not intuitive.
- Poor inventory management system (weight 0.14): Inventory management is a major issue due to limited space, lack of expansion options, and inconvenient storage systems.  This forces players to spend excessive time shuffling items and memorizing locations, hindering overall gameplay flow and enjoyment.  The game lacks quality of life features.
- Slow pace, can be boring (weight 0.11): The game can feel slow-paced and repetitive, with some reviewers finding it boring after a while.  The game also has some bugs and performance issues.  The game is addictively frustrating.
- Disappointing and incomplete ending (weight 0.1): The game's ending is often described as disappointing, abrupt, and incomplete, leaving many plot points unresolved.  This lack of closure diminishes the overall player experience and may require purchasing DLC to address unanswered questions.  Some players also encountered bugs.
- Uninteresting NPCs, limited availability (weight 0.08): NPCs are often uninteresting, with limited interactions beyond quest dialogue and trading. Their schedules, with limited availability, add unnecessary complexity and time pressure to quest progression.  Some reviewers found the NPCs to be unlikeable or soulless.
- Slow movement, tedious travel (weight 0.06): Slow character movement and limited fast travel options make traversing the game world tedious and time-consuming.  The teleport stone's cooldown and restricted locations exacerbate the issue, leading to excessive walking and hindering efficient gameplay.  This makes the game feel like a 'walking simulator'.
- Difficult early game progression (weight 0.05): Early game skill points are difficult to acquire, and the skill tree is difficult to read and understand.  The game has a steep learning curve due to the overwhelming amount of information and activities.  The beginning of the game is slow.
- DLC feels essential, expensive (weight 0.04): DLC content is not always immediately accessible and may feel like quality-of-life improvements that should have been in the base game. Some reviewers feel that the base game is actively made worse without the DLCs.  The DLCs are also expensive.
- Overpriced, not worth full price (weight 0.04): The game is considered overpriced for what it offers, especially compared to similar games.  The game feels like it hasn't gone through sufficient play testing and revision.  The game is only worth buying on sale.
- Inferior to Stardew Valley mechanics (weight 0.04): Several mechanics, such as fishing and relationships, are considered inferior to those in Stardew Valley.  The game lacks certain features found in similar games, such as dating or starting a family.  The fishing minigame is undesirable.
- Time-gated by NPC schedules (weight 0.04): Quest progression is often delayed due to NPCs only being available on specific days of the week. This forces players to wait extended periods to advance storylines, creating artificial delays and disrupting the gameplay flow.
- Soft locks, hard locks, grinding (weight 0.04): The game features soft-locks and hard locks, which can prevent players from progressing. The dungeon design allows players to soft lock themselves, which is a major design flaw. The game involves a significant amount of grinding.
- Confusing, tedious alchemy system (weight 0.04): The alchemy system is confusing, tedious, and often illogical, requiring excessive trial and error or reliance on external guides.  The lack of in-game tracking for tried combinations exacerbates the issue.  Alchemy is practically unnecessary.
- Graveyard aspect is underdeveloped (weight 0.03): The game's focus shifts away from graveyard management, despite its title, with players spending more time on farming, fishing, and fetch quests.  The graveyard aspect becomes a small and less important part of the overall gameplay experience.  The game world is small.

Gameplay feedback:
- Graveyard, corpse, church management (weight 0.23): The core gameplay loop revolves around managing a medieval graveyard, processing corpses (including autopsies and organ removal), and maintaining a church to generate income and faith. Players engage in morally ambiguous activities like selling corpse meat and using zombies for labor. The quality of the graveyard and church directly impacts progression and resource generation.
- Technology tree drives progression (weight 0.12): Progression is primarily driven by a technology tree, where players earn points through various actions to unlock new crafting recipes, buildings, and abilities. This system encourages players to engage in different activities to acquire the necessary points for advancement. Unlocking technologies is essential for game progression and quest completion.
- NPC quests and weekly schedules (weight 0.11): The game features a quest system where players interact with NPCs to advance storylines and unlock new content. NPCs have weekly schedules, appearing only on specific days, which requires players to plan their activities accordingly. Quests often involve crafting items or running errands to increase reputation with NPCs.
- Zombie automation for tasks (weight 0.05): The game introduces automation mechanics, particularly through the use of zombies, to alleviate the resource grind. While initially players must perform most tasks manually, automation becomes available later in the game, especially with DLC content. However, some reviews suggest that the automation is limited or flawed.
- Energy system and time management (weight 0.05): The game incorporates an energy system that depletes with actions and is replenished by food or sleep. Players must manage their energy levels to efficiently perform tasks and progress through the game. The day-night cycle also affects character availability and actions.
- Church management and sermons (weight 0.03): Managing a church is an important aspect of the game, involving conducting sermons to earn faith and donations. The quality of sermons depends on church decorations and player skills. Faith is a resource needed for progressing the main story, alchemy, and cemetery decorations.
- Farming is not essential (weight 0.03): Farming is present in the game but is not as essential or central as in games like Stardew Valley. It is primarily used for food, character development, and specific quest items. Some activities like fishing and beekeeping feel pointless, with little impact on gameplay.
- Fetch quests and slow story (weight 0.03): The game features a story with a specific end goal, but it is often described as a fetch-quest style game with story elements sprinkled in. Story progression can be slow, requiring players to wait in-game days for characters to appear or quests to advance. The game is not a farm sim, despite having similar mechanics.
- Simple dungeon combat (weight 0.02): Combat is present in the game through underground dungeons accessible after completing quests. The combat system is simple, involving pressing a button to swing a sword, with no ranged weapons and uncomplicated enemies. Dungeons contain secrets and resources.
- Dungeon is an afterthought (weight 0.02): The dungeon is often considered an afterthought, with inventory management being the primary concern. Enemies are mild inconveniences, and the dungeon has little replay value after completion. Weapons and armor are primarily useful for the dungeon.
- Dark tone and themes (weight 0.02): The game has a darker tone and explores themes of death and local problems. It features dark humor and isn't afraid to raise surprising themes. The player is stuck in a town and must make decisions for its people.
- Better Save Soul DLC mechanics (weight 0.02): The Better Save Soul DLC introduces a mechanic of working with the souls of corpses and redeeming them. This DLC allows for further improvement of corpses, leading to higher cemetery scores or nearly perfect zombies. However, it can contradict the zombie mechanic.

Performance notes:
- Performance issues and game crashes (weight 0.06): Players report a range of performance issues, including frame rate drops, stuttering, lag, and screen tearing. These problems occur across different hardware configurations and game locations, sometimes worsening over long play sessions or when performing specific actions like building or entering certain areas. Some players also experience game crashes, occasionally leading to lost progress.
- Mixed opinions on optimization (weight 0.05): Some reviewers praise the game's optimization, noting its smooth performance on a variety of hardware, including the Steam Deck. Others describe the graphics and sound as minimalistic, and some find the music repetitive.
- Bug reports vary widely (weight 0.04): While some players experience no issues, others encounter various bugs, ranging from minor typos and graphical glitches to more severe problems that can disrupt gameplay. Some players have experienced game-breaking bugs that required restarting the game.
- Steam Cloud and Steam Deck issues (weight 0.02): Some players have reported issues with Steam Cloud synchronization and the Steam Deck, requiring workarounds to enable cloud saves. This can be frustrating for players who rely on these features for cross-device play or data backup.
- Specific gameplay bugs reported (weight 0.01): Players have reported specific gameplay bugs, such as technology points getting stuck and zombies disappearing when assigned tasks. These issues can impede progression and disrupt the intended gameplay loop.
- Inventory interaction slowdown (weight 0.01): Inventory interactions slow down as the number of items in the vicinity increases, particularly when interacting with crates. This performance degradation can become a nuisance as players accumulate more items.
- Borderless windowed mode issues (weight 0.01): The game lacks a true borderless windowed mode, causing it to minimize when alt-tabbed, which also stops the music. A workaround involves using a borderless program and playing in fullscreen to avoid minimization.
- Repetitive in-game soundtrack (weight 0.01): Some players find the in-game soundtrack repetitive and eventually prefer to listen to their own music. This suggests that the game's music may not be engaging or varied enough for extended play sessions.
- Joke about low PC requirements (weight 0): This point is a joke about the game's low PC requirements and is not a constructive feedback.

Recommendations:
- Compared to Stardew Valley (weight 0.54): Many reviewers compare the game to Stardew Valley, noting similarities in gameplay but with a darker theme and more complex mechanics. Some recommend it to fans of Stardew Valley looking for a different experience, while others suggest sticking with Stardew Valley or other similar games due to the game's flaws.
- Overwhelmingly positive (vague) (weight 0.09): Some reviewers express overwhelmingly positive sentiments, rating the game perfectly and considering it a masterpiece. However, these reviews often lack specific details about the gameplay or features that make the game so enjoyable, reducing their constructiveness.
- Mods improve gameplay experience (weight 0.02): Several reviewers recommend using mods to improve the gameplay experience, such as easing the grind, increasing movement speed, or extending days. This suggests that the base game has some issues that can be addressed through modding.
- Teleport stone is essential (weight 0.02): Acquiring the teleportation stone early in the game is highly recommended by multiple reviewers. This item helps save time and makes navigating the game world more efficient, suggesting that travel can be tedious without it.
- Desire for a sequel (weight 0.01): Some reviewers express a desire for a sequel or future installments, indicating that they enjoyed the game and want to see the world and story expanded upon.

Other player notes:
- Complex, time-consuming gameplay. (weight 0.06): The game is complex and time-consuming, often requiring players to consult external resources like wikis to understand its mechanics and manage its various systems. Players may need to take notes to keep track of crafting components and quest objectives. The story is long and can become stale in the late game.
- Differs from Stardew Valley. (weight 0.04): While similar to Stardew Valley in some aspects, Graveyard Keeper distinguishes itself with darker themes, a focus on corpse management, and a quest-driven narrative centered on escaping a difficult situation. Unlike Stardew Valley's open-ended gameplay and emphasis on NPC relationships, Graveyard Keeper offers a more structured and macabre experience.
- Visually impressive pixel art. (weight 0.02): The game features impressive pixel art, detailed environments, and a cohesive visual style that contributes positively to the overall experience. The art style is often described as beautiful and well-executed, enhancing the game's atmosphere.
- Mods improve quality of life. (weight 0.01): Players recommend using mods to improve the game's quality of life and add more fun. However, it's important to back up game saves before installing mods to avoid potential issues.
- Buy on sale. (weight 0.01): Reviewers suggest purchasing the game on sale due to significant price differences. The base game and DLCs often receive substantial discounts, making it a more worthwhile investment.
- Explores religious, philosophical themes. (weight 0.01): The game incorporates religious themes and imagery, vaguely resembling European Christianity, and explores philosophical concepts related to life and death. This adds depth and intrigue to the game's narrative and world-building.

Emotions:
No emotions}